Thursday, April 25, 2013

Groovy Guest-Post: "Under the Influence" by Gerry Giovinco

Check it out, Groove-ophiles! Among our beloved lunatic legion there roam actual, honest-to-gosh comicbook publishers! And not just any comicbook publishers, but guys like Gerry Giovinco and Bill Cucinotta (our very own "Anonymous Mr. Bill"), founders of the pioneering 80s comicbook company Comico the Comic Company (Where they discovered guys like Bill Willingham, Matt Wagner, and a few dozen other names you might know!)! Bill and Gerry have revived Comico asCO2 Comics, and Ol' Groove just knows Groove City wants to know all about what these groovy guys are generating. A couple of e-mail exchanges and SHAZAM! We've got a Groovy Guest-Post laying the CO2Comics lowdown on us. Dig it!

Hey, hey,
hey, Groove-ophiles! Boy that is sure fun to let out, but I have to
admit I'm embarrassed by how hard it was to get my groove on to write
this guest post! I needed more hair, a polyester shirt, plaid knit pants
and a pair of blue platforms before flashing back to the seventies.
What an era!

What an influential era for the makers of comic books!
I entered my teen years in the seventies and was immersed in comics,
mostly Marvel by preference. To this day whenever a "Classic Rock" tune
is played I immediately smell the musty odor of 25 cent newsprint comics
and wax nostalgic to dynamic images written and drawn by a list of
comic legends that is so impressive we need a whole blog site like Diversions of the Groovy Kind to do them all justice.

It was a time in history where a kid like
me, and there were many, could for the first time, imagine an exciting
career making comic books. Early comic book conventions gave us an
opportunity to meet our heroes, those that made the comics, and imagine
ourselves in their shoes. They were real people. Genuine. And they took
the time to encourage, critique and mentor enthusiastic aspiring comic
creators like myself.

The young minds of the seventies, cultivated
on a steady diet of comics, met each other, came together and began a
revolution fueled by the formation of the Direct Comic Market that would
change the course of comics history.

Bill Cucinotta and I were part of that movement when we came together as part of the co-publishing team of Comico the Comic Company. Our adventures as publishers back in the day are chronicled on the blog of our new venture CO2 Comics.

The following is a concentrated list of links of all things Comico for the true Groove-ophile to wallow in on a rainy day so be sure to bookmark this page.

Skip ahead thirty
years to today and we are still influenced by that seventies era; still
focused on the same things that motivated us as young publishers:
diversity, quality and creators rights. CO2 Comics represents our new
publishing approach to a new era with the same creative values that we
always had; values that we learned growing up in the seventies, reading
comic books.

Using today's technology we publish thousands of pages of FREE comics on the internet that reach a global audience. We publish wonderful graphic novels
in print using Print on Demand services that allow us to sell our
product directly to our readers. We are grooving on this new era of
digital technology!

We hope that one of our greatest contributions will be the compilation of David Anthony Kraft's COMICS INTERVIEW The Complete Collection, www.comicsinterview.com an eleven volume set of "The
Greatest Collection of Interviews in the History of Comic Books!" that
compiles the entire 150 issue run of David Anthony Kraft's celebrated
Comics Interview Magazine. Each volume
contains over 600 pages of riveting history of the comic book industry.
Currently the first two volumes are available featuring the first 28
issues of the magazine. Volume three is currently in production.

Many
of the subjects whose interviews grace the pages had careers that dated
back to the dawn of the industry itself, while others continue to work
in the industry today. A portal to atime at the center of the history of comic books, David Anthony Kraft's COMICS INTERVIEW The Complete Collection is an invaluable historical treasure and certainly one that will tickle the nostalgic nerve of every Groove-ophile!

Thanks
for the opportunity for the flashback and the plug. Sometimes we have
to take the time to remind ourselves where we came from to understand
exactly where we are going. We're all still groovin' on the influence of
one of the greatest eras in comics so look out for what's ahead!

I really enjoyed this guest post! I clicked on all of the CO2 blog links and thoroughly enjoyed reading the history of Comico -- what an amazing story! It is really inspiring to read about people pursuing their dreams and having success. I also had a blast watching the "Hulk meets the Thing" movie. I will be visiting the CO2 site frequently in the future.

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Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.

All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!